


the taste of salt on our tongues (it's tearing us apart)

by fishycorvid



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence, Episode: s02e14 Defense Rests, F/M, Missing Scene, angst.jpg, could be either depending on how you interpret it, set during 2x14
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-24 18:56:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14960219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishycorvid/pseuds/fishycorvid
Summary: Amy finds him sitting on the roof of the precinct.Jake’s perched on the little wall on the edge, facing away from her, legs swinging out over the alley on the east side of the building. At first, he doesn’t acknowledge her presence, even as she inches hesitantly towards him. He doesn’t so much as move, and it’s unsettling: this is the man who seems to be called to flying, to running, to jumping, to fidgeting; she looks at him out of the corner of her eye while working a case and he’ll always be tapping a pen against the desk or messing around with a Rubix cube he’s too lazy to learn how to solve or trying to hit the back of Charles’ head with a balled up piece of scratch paper. It’s not even nervous energy, either, mostly, just his nature, his need to be doing something. He’s the kind of person that Amy would’ve written off back in high school as a distracted idiot who wouldn’t amount to anything, but it’s now deceptively clear that Jake Peralta is anything but.





	the taste of salt on our tongues (it's tearing us apart)

**Author's Note:**

> this is just uh. some angst. enjoy (and thank you to nevermindthewind for her input!)

Amy finds him sitting on the roof of the precinct.

Jake’s perched on the little wall on the edge, facing away from her, legs swinging out over the alley on the east side of the building. At first, he doesn’t acknowledge her presence, even as she inches hesitantly towards him. He doesn’t so much as move, and it’s unsettling: this is the man who seems to be called to flying, to running, to jumping, to fidgeting; she looks at him out of the corner of her eye while working a case and he’ll always be tapping a pen against the desk or messing around with a Rubix cube he’s too lazy to learn how to solve or trying to hit the back of Charles’ head with a balled up piece of scratch paper. It’s not even nervous energy, either, mostly, just his nature, his simple need to be _doing something._ He’s the kind of person that Amy would’ve written off back in high school as a distracted idiot who wouldn’t amount to anything, but it’s now deceptively clear that Jake Peralta is anything but.

She edges a little closer and places her palm on his back, steady and warm. Jake jerks around, eyes wide, and tries to conceal his sharp inhalation of shock.

“Hey,” Amy says quietly, and she can see him close off, watches shutters come down around his eyes and his shoulders tense as his guard goes back up.

He kicks at the air, avoiding her gaze. “Hey.”

Gingerly, she sits down next to him, facing the opposite direction (she’s not a fan of heights and doesn’t want her feet to be dangling over open space, thanks very much), and leans back to see his face. “What happened?” Amy keeps her voice as measured as possible, trying to conceal her curiosity with steadiness.

Even from where she sits, inches away from him, she can feel his harsh inhale, the way he ducks away from the question like maybe he can escape it.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me about it, I get it, but–”

Jake cuts her off with a mere look, and Amy startles just a little at the pure ache in his gaze, the rawness trapped in every line of his face, the way his mouth hangs open slightly but his jaw is tightened like every breath is a battle he can’t lose. “It’s not– it doesn’t matter, Santiago, just let me alone.”

“Jake,” she murmurs, and he looks at her like a man rent apart. She wishes she could look away; she could never look away, never.

“I told her I loved her,” Jake breathes out, but even at the low volume, the barely-words break on their way out, dropping to the alley below and crumbling apart on the dead air.

Amy can’t say anything. There’s an ache in her lungs that she tries to breathe out of herself, but it doesn’t go away, doesn’t even lessen.

“You…?” she tries to start, but he shakes his head with a grating, humorless laugh and she sees the way his fingernails are biting into his palms and she stops again. And anyways, she wouldn't know what to say. 

He tries for braggadocio, for humor: “Yeah. Unlucky in love as always; that’s Jake Peralta for you.” It doesn’t work. Amy keeps looking at him, eyes inscrutable and dark and sad. “She said it wasn’t worth the work, essentially.” The words left unspoken: _I_ wasn’t worth the work.

(Unspoken, yes, but they linger in the air. Amy wishes she could reach out and touch their jagged edges, strangle them before they can get snagged on Jake and hold onto him too tight.)

“Jake–” Amy can’t say anything anymore. The words get twisted on the way out. She just blinks slowly in lieu of saying words that would rip at anyone’s flesh and tries instead to focus on light brown eyes with their fissure straight through the middle that she feels more than she sees.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, not in response to anything, just to fill the silence. Their bodies are outwardly relaxed but Jake and Amy are tense in a way that goes straight on down to the marrow of their bones, their nerves, the pathways winding their aimless way through their brains.

She tries again. “Jake–” But her throat is too dry; whatever she might have said scrapes across her tongue like a rusted knife. Eventually, though, she succeeds with “You were too good for her. You always were.”

Jake laughs and shakes his head. “Whatever. Cop and attorney. Good guy versus bad. I’ve heard it before, Santiago.”

“No. You were too good for her. Not your– your fucking _occupation_ or whatever. _You_ were too good for her.” The sentences, disjointed and awkward, shoulder their way through air only otherwise stirred by wind smelling faintly of cigarettes. “You always had been.”

His voice is strained, stretched almost to breaking. “Amy. You don’t–”

“Just stop, okay?” Angry. Exhausted. “Stop.” Tired and more sad this time. She clears her throat and tries again. “Stop. You deserved so much more than… whatever the hell you had with her.” He won’t meet her eyes, and he’s still shaking his head like he can’t hear her, doesn’t want to hear her. _“Jake._ Listen to me. You are–” Amy struggles for words and pins his hand down with hers when he holds it up to stop her. “You are one of the best people I ever met. You’re kind and funny and so smart, and you deserved– _deserve–_ so much better and so much more than some idiot _fucking_ lawyer who doesn’t think you’re worth it, because you are, Jake, you’re worth so much more than I or she or anyone else has ever given you. Anybody would be so, so lucky to have you. And don’t argue with me on this, just… trust me. I’m your partner. I’m not screwing you on this.” His fingers grips hers tightly, and if she looked down she knows she would see pale half-moon crescents forming on her knuckles and palm where his nails are digging in, but instead of telling him to loosen up, she holds on tighter. “I’m your partner,” Amy repeats, and there’s this shuddering, broken smile curving up the corner of his lips, but then even that fades away after a few seconds.

Amy tries not to see the tears in his eyes; she knows that he wants her to go away but still wants her to stay, wants her to keep talking to him but doesn’t want her to see him so vulnerable and broken. Every nerve her body is buzzing with a fear that comes from inside and outside of herself, and her fingers dig into the cement barrier between the precinct and the fall down to the dirty alley below. She looks down at the street.

“Amy,” Jake says again, this time in a stumbling whisper, and his fingers are shaking against hers.

She turns her head towards him and finds a pleading, shattered face that seems so unnatural compared to the grinning, cocky, fiercely intelligent detective she’s known for years, that she has bickered with about coffee and detective work and relationships, has solved cases with, has trusted with her life, has cared about so deeply that she doesn’t want to examine this love trapped under her tongue and on her lips but can’t fathom a life without it.

His face, inches away from hers.

If asked about it later (they aren’t asked about it later. They never talk about it again, because how could they?), they will claim that they couldn’t taste the damp salt on their lips (tears, tears that linger on their skin long after they are brushed away); they will claim that they could breathe. But. They will know about the tears staining their cheeks and mouths, know about the air trapped in their lungs, know about the cars rushing by and the stray cat knocking down the trash can below them and the distant chaos of a police precinct at their backs, know that neither of them moved first but suddenly there they were together, soft and painfully gentle and so, so sad. They linger, lips barely touching, breathing in immeasurably quiet gasps, eyelashes fluttering away the tears clinging to their eyes, fingers dancing nervously.

Jake speaks first: “Amy, I–”

“Don’t,” she mumbles, and, slowly, turns her head down and away, closing her eyes. “We shouldn’t have– I shouldn’t have– I’m sorry.” Amy swallows and moves her hand off of his, electing instead to brush away her tears. “It was a mistake.” And it is, because he’s heartbroken and lonely and doesn’t think he’s enough, no matter how much he tries, and she’s shattered and stumbling and his coworker and, fuck, his _friend._ It can’t be anything other than a mistake but cuts her down to the bones to say it, cold and sharp. She wishes she knew if it cut him too.

“Yeah,” Jake agrees quietly, and leans away, staring with blind, dead eyes out over their city. “It was.”

**Author's Note:**

> well, i hope you guys liked this scatterbrained weird trainwreck of angst! do amy and jake work it out after this? is everything ruined forever? you decide!! 
> 
> anyways if you enjoyed this or at least felt something, please leave kudos/a comment! thank you so much for reading this stuff! <3


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